This invention relates to a meat flaking machine for cutting a block of meat into meat flakes.
In the preparation of ground meat, such as hamburger meat at the retail level, it is customary to reduce the meat from initial large pieces, such as sides or blocks of meat, to smaller pieces or flakes which may be fed into the grinding machine. In recent years, there has been increasing importation into this country of meat in the form of frozen, generally rectangular blocks weighing about 30 pounds. In the retailing of ground meat, for example, at the butcher shop or in the meat department of a supermarket, there has arisen a need for a meat flaking machine which can be used to reduce such meat blocks to meat flakes suitable for feeding into a meat grinding machine, usually along with fresh meat, to produce ground meat. The flaking machine of the present invention is intended to meet this need.
The present machine has some resemblances to a much larger type of flaking machine disclosed in an earlier patent to the present applicant, U.S. Pat. No. 3,530,914 for "Meat Flaker". Such earlier machine was intended primarily for meat wholesalers and much larger commercial installations and, while highly suitable for those purposes, would usually be in excess of the requirements of the average supermarket meat department, retail butcher shop or the like. Such prior machine, among other differences, utilized power operated loading equipment whereas the loading of the present machine is intended for manual operation, which raises special problems.
In particular, with a manually operated machine, it is necessary to provide a loading tray for loading the meat blocks into the machine and also a hand operated pressure plate for maintaining manual pressure against the meat block sufficient to force it through the cutting mechanism which reduces the block to flakes. With such a manually operated arrangement, a problem could arise if the machine should be loaded with a block of meat while the pressure plate is still in the down position which it occupied at the conclusion of cutting of the previous block of meat. In that event the newly inserted block of meat could completely jam all the parts in position requiring the machine to be taken apart by a mechanic before it could be operated.
It is also particularly important with a meat flaking machine for use by persons such as supermarket operators who are not skilled in, or particularly familiar with, meat cutting equipment, that any such machine should facilitate easy cleaning at the conclusion of each day's operations to maintain a hygenic installation.